Saroja – Simply best and new
Perhaps, Saroja entitles Venkat Prabhu as the most gifted director of Tamil film industry. Vividly inspired from brilliant trilogy of Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel directed by Alejandra Gonzalez Inarritu and his remarkable screenwriter Guillermo Ariagga. In particular, he seems to have applied the concept of Babel in the narration. This film is not heavy going, for the story is so simple with a straight-way narration. But Saroja is something extraordinarily rich and indeed the year’s richest, most fashionable and ultimately the most enjoyable film. Thriller-comedy: not many of the filmmakers in Kollywood have tried down with this genre and Venkat Prabhu has spelled with it more trenchantly.
Saroja is about lives of different people at different places that get linked by a pivotal event at fine one day. Ajay Raj (Shiva) a TV artist, Ganesh (Premji) a fun guy, and two brothers Jagapathi Babu (S.P.B Charan) and Ram Babu (Vaibhav) are close friends in Chennai who kill their times enjoying life together. Viswanathan (Prakash Raj), the happening top-charting tycoon in Hyderabad who has no time to spend for his wife and daughter Saroja (Vega). Things go clichéd until Saroja is kidnapped by group of unknown people. Viswanathan takes in the aid of his close friend Ravichandran (Jayaram), who is assistant commissioner of police. Both of them try working out their plans in getting to know whereabouts Saroja. On the parallel, 4 youngsters all the way from Chennai head to Hyderabad for watching a cricket match between India and Pakistan. A mishap occurs when a large container lorry accidentally falls down on National Highway 47. With no option left, these guys take a different path assuming it to be the short cut. Here starts the spine chilling ride when these youngsters get trapped into a serious situation where they have to fight for their live leading to the unexpected climax…
Shiva, Vaibhav, SPB Charan and Premgi Amaran who not all carry star-values win our hearts simply with their naturalistic performance. Prakash Raj, raw and emotionally bruised, missing his daughter and while confessing to his wife about the flaws of past is penchant. Jayaram on his part does justice to his role. Vega, Nikita and Kajal Agarwal add up to different quotients of best performance.
Premji Amaran sways with great performance right throughout the film, especially in the sequences where he utters the punch dialogues Vijay in Azhagiya Tamizh Magan and Rajnikanth in Sivaji…
Nikitha as glamorous, Kajol Agarwal as bubbly cheerful and Vega as fretful girl are fine and good. But, Vega makes a fresh start performing as much she can, but doesn’t have appealing face looks…
Blending comedy and thriller right from the beginning till the final rolling credits makes the film is so unique and entertaining for the masses. A mix of elements that will satisfy ‘A’ centres as well B and frontbenchers has been very well. But the film seems to so lengthy and for few things may get over their heads with major portion are all about chasing in dark night.
Symbolisms have been very well used by Venkat Prabhu. The film begins with fun, frolic and songs in the bright daytime gradually turning into mystifying thriller in the dark and things getting settled in the next day dawn. They are bit similar to Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali where a woman reads the letter mailed by her husband. As she starts reading the letter, her husband states that he is happy there and city life is so busy there. Lady keeps reading this directly under the sun and when the lines continue that her husband hasn’t found a job and things are getting toughened up, she moves under the shadow of tree, where the letter looks bit dark.
Yuvan Shankar Raja’s musical score enhances the feeling of spine-chilling thriller and songs have been churned out well. But the million dollar question is that are the songs are really necessary for the film. Except the final song of ‘Ezhundhiru Nimindhiru’, none of them do really suit for the situations in film.
Cinematography by Saravanan Sakthi adds more strength to the film with grand deliverance of visual quality. But that satisfies only elite and B groups of audiences for they would love the innovative style of cranking camera with more dark shots. But what we hear from frontbenchers is that ‘Is this Mani Rathnam film shot in complete darkness?’ and may be their advocacy is right from their perspective…
On the whole, Saroja is a splendid piece of work from Venkat Prabhu and as Chennai 600028; this is another trendsetting flick from Venkat Prabhu. Hats off to producer T. Siva for his bold attempt of producing a film sans big star-casts and a new experimental storyline… Hope Venkat Prabhu carries the top-notched work in his forthcoming flick Goa.
Cast & Crew:
Banner: Amma Creations
Production: T.Siva
Story, Screenplay, Dialogues and Direction: Venkat Prabhu
Starring: Jayaram, Prakash Raj, Sampath, Siva, Vaibhav, Premji Amaran, SPB Charan, Vega, Nikitha and many others.
Music: Yuvan Shankar Raja
Cinematography: Saravana Sakthi
Editing: Praveen-Srikanth
Verdict: Saroja – finest flick of the times…
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2 Responses
100% sure it is the best
Posted on December 7th, 2009 at 7:14 am
this is a pure rip off from “Judgement Night” (1993) with Cuba Gooding Jr playing the lead. i’m disappointed
Posted on November 25th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
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